It takes a special brand of moxie (or delusion or intoxication) to play metal seriously. For the Toronto, Canada based Anvil, who are the subject of The Terminal screenwriter and former #1 Anvil fan Sasha Gervasi’s documentary, the outrageous dream of everlasting youth that fuels even the most pedestrian of aging rock bands to continue on is still in full force as its members grapple with life in their fifties.
The film, which opens on Friday after a stellar, year long trip around the American festival circuit, chronicles the band’s origins, their decade of relative success and their fall into obscurity. For its members, Steve “Lips” Kudlow (lead vocals, lead guitar), Robb Reiner (the drummer,not the director of This Is Spinal Tap), Dave Allison (vocals, rhythm guitar) and Ian Dickson (bass), Metal is not something to be outgrown, to be cast aside as an embarrassing folly of youth. While it may seem that being a faded eighties hair metal band star is one of the more unfortunate paths that could befall a professional musician, for the members of Anvil, who began a new tour last night that is largely due to the publicity the film has generated, perhaps a third act can still exist. I doubt we can say the same for the following bands.
This week, thanks to The Rocker, we can add another fictional band to the long list of music groups created solely for the movies. They’re called Vesuvius, and they’re an ‘80s hair band with a hit song titled “Promised Land.” As part of the film’s marketing, the track was offered as a free download for play on Rock Band (see the clip above). But if you ask me, the wrong tune was used in the promotion. Another song from the soundtrack, also credited to Vesuvius, is called “Pompeii Nights,” and it’s definitely the better of the two.
I’m not surprised, though. While most people favor the songs of Spinal Tap, a once-fictional band that has become popular enough to evolve into a “semi-fictional” performing act, I’ve preferred such gems as “The Whites of Their Eyes” by PEZ® People, from The Big Picture. Also co-written by This is Spinal Tap’s Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, and sung by McKean, this song is apparently so underrated that I can’t even find an audio sample, let along a YouTube clip of the fake band’s music video, which was directed by fictional filmmaker Lydia Johnson (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
Fortunately, for the benefit of this list, the rest of these under-appreciated tracks have a few fellow fans.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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